Size of Hydrocarbons Related Exports Revenues

The MENA region countries are made of two types of countries, those of oil and gas producers and those that are not. In the first group, countries are ranked according to the size of their gross domestic product, taken as such or as per its capita version. Other means of sizing up economies have been conjured up over time, but most importantly, it was the need to look closer into each economy and try to discern any prevailing trend that caught on. This notion of ranking as proposed by Statista on August 1, 2017 according to the size of hydrocarbons related exports revenues has lately become some sort of normative piece of knowledge from amongst the digital data plethora of today.

Commenting such chart would be irresistible when assessing positions and percent of oil dependency of the various countries not only for the countries themselves but also for all those countries that are linked one way or another to each or to a group of these countries. As a matter of fact, it should be noted that there is no greater linkage of countries as that of those of the MENA region obviously for historical reasons but above all for the region’s interrelated and long established human settlements.

The oil price has slumped by some 50 percent since 2014. This has bad repercussions for states that are highly dependent on revenue from oil exports, of which most are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Nigeria, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are most dependent on oil revenue. As our chart shows, the current price (even though it has recovered somewhat lately) is still far too low for most OPEC members to balance their budgets. Only Iran and Kuwait are in the clear – if the price stayed stable, which is highly unlikely.

A concoction of sinking oil prices and higher costs for production combined with more state expenditures has undermined OPEC countries’ ability to siphon off enough revenue from oil exports. The organization’s market might has also been undermined by proliferation of alternative production methods, such as the exploitation of shale oil in the United States. This means OPEC’s traditionally high ability to steer prices has dwindled.